UPDATE: President Obama has chosen Merrick Garland as his Supreme Court nominee. Now that the president has done his job, it's time for members of the Senate to do theirs.

After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly, the Senate GOP immediately pledged to obstruct any attempt by President Obama to fulfill his constitutional obligation to nominate a replacement. Since then, the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have doubled down on their commitment to block consideration of any nominee until the next president takes office by announcing that they would not even hold hearings or meet with the nominee, regardless of who it is. Never in history have Senators preemptively refused to even consider a Supreme Court nomination before knowing the nominee's name.

The bottom line is this: There is no election year exception to Article II of the Constitution. As Nan Aron and Kyle C. Barry wrote in The Nation, the election to determine who shall fill this Supreme Court vacancy already happened “in 2012, when the American people elected President Obama to another four-year term that still has 11 months remaining.”

Tell the Republican leadership and all US Senators: Do your job. Give fair consideration and a timely up-or-down vote to President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

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